noteworthy
In each issue, the editors choose a writer whom they would like to bring
to the readers' attention.In this issue, poet Karen Skolfield is highlighted.
Karen Skolfield understands the machinations of a world where calamity may (or may not) be averted by checking to see if a mattress is still strapped to a car. Her humor steadies us in an unnerving world where urgent care includes $99 Botox and provides clarity to one in which “Technically, you’re still children, but soldiers” and “You can’t drink or stay out past 2300, but you can shoot people.” With humor, toughness and hope, her poetry binds up a world weary of loose ends, where we could use “…a girl’s hands / cupped around broken blue eggs, guarding / only the speckled idea of the bird.”
Spackler's Lament
Ten Thousand Baby Mollusks Named Karen Diane
$99 Botox at Urgent Care Clinic, Los Angeles
Checking that the Mattress Is Still Strapped to the Car
Last Night's Fight
Army SMART Book: On Being Lost
Bivouac
Movie Night, Public Affairs Barracks, Fort Benjamin Harrison
Dream House
Skeleton Key
Manassas
Leveret
Seam Allowance
Without Gravity
All over the city, pockmarks in cement,
imperfect surfaces, macadam’s undulations,
rounded edges where hard corners should reign.
Stop signs with bullet holes. Loose screws
at the playground: holes-to-be. Bee hives,
doorways that never close,
the space between bars at zoos and jails,
the madness of chain-link fences.
Certain yoga poses. Windows rolled down,
someone beautiful leaning out
of the taxi, calling in Spanish or Catalan.
Clouds torn by the wind and patched again;
above that, faint craters of a daytime moon.
The country’s no better. Ragged shagbark,
the emptiness formed by a squirrel’s tail
touching its back, holes in the snow,
the indentation made before the seed drops in,
the very thought of seed cavities, blue bottles
lined up on a windowsill, your windowsill,
in the country, your face with a mouth.
Victorian trim. In the yard, a girl’s hands
cupped around broken blue eggs, guarding
only the speckled idea of the bird.
Ten Thousand Baby Mollusks Named Karen Diane
Not to overstate, but this mollusk owes
its life to me. California beach,
softball-size turban shells, a bunch
of young guys showing off for some girls.
Low tide and they found the coiled shell
I’d just picked up and set down.
What is it, what is it, they cried,
turned it over and saw the mollusk’s great foot,
one giant white muscle strong enough
to resist the tides, oh gross, one said, a girl,
because it’s a snail, really, an unlovely
gelatinous body, it eats with its foot,
moves in ripples of flesh, does not speak,
does not sing or fly or hunt in packs,
the things we humans admire, does not have
a courtship dance, does not groom its mate,
does not look eerily like us or nurse its young.
I’m going to crack it open, one yelled.
And the California-brown boy raised it
over his head.
Later I looked up the shell. Tegula regina,
the queen’s turban, hard shelled
but on the inside soft, defenseless,
almost let go but not quite, the long arm
of this boy nearly a man, ashamed long enough
to put it back when I screamed no,
carefully even in the water where, in an hour,
the waves would reach. I thought at first
I was the voice of the mollusk, yelling
what it might yell but I was my own voice
shouting over the onshore winds, the surf,
shouting at the long brown arm,
at the queen drawn back
in its stranded shell, splendid,
higher than it had ever been.
$99 Botox at Urgent Care Clinic, Los Angeles
I want to take a picture of the sign
but I can’t convince Dennis
of the worthiness of it, it’s fast-food Botox,
it seems so California, certainly worth
pulling over though we’re jet lagged
and can’t find a restaurant,
does no one eat here, are all their needs
met through Botox and furniture stores,
“Please pull over,” I ask.
Dennis lays his hand on mine and says
“Their needs are different from yours.”
That’s his way, I understand the lesson
but I want to learn California,
I have books for identifying grasses
and sedge, it seems so ridiculous here.
I own rain boots, a snow shovel,
backwoods skis, I’m forty, I’m curious,
who wouldn’t be, give me a glimpse,
give me clients, give me $99, the camera,
a few crow’s feet, I want to take this
with me, tuck California in a warm pocket,
I’m all laugh lines, I’m out of my element,
I’m gaping at the sign and then it’s gone
and it’s my whole body, sagging.
Checking that the Mattress Is Still Strapped to the Car
That’s how the world works: A little mirror
tells you more than you want to know.
Let’s say you’re moving cross country,
reinventing yourself. You think a cowboy hat
would suit you, or a Nehru collar, a nose ring.
Once a person of your gender
rubbed a hand through your hair and you liked it.
Spent a long time deciding if it
was a “tousle” or a “caress,” and what
did it mean that you closed your eyes,
that you close your eyes sometimes and think
of fingers, that happy zing to the brain? The feel
of startled feathers across your scalp?
That’s an entirely unsexy word, scalp. Better
to be touched on the cheek, the thigh,
somewhere else in the body’s restaurant
that is warm, warm, and strangers lean in
for a smell.
There’s a road rick-racked in front,
some big states beyond. There’s a mattress
on your car. There’s your hair, beneath it.
Sometimes, you reach up to see it’s still there.
I’m lost in a strange country with customs
that are not mine, a language of bells, a way of dancing
that involves only the eyes or the hands, where stars
are unfamiliar, where stars are rearranged into stories
of shepherds crooking the last, lost sheep;
where the dowries consist of buttons, cowry shells,
the bones of mammals. I am learning
the words for scales, hooking, sleep; I learn
how fish is prepared, how a boat’s maiden voyage
cleaves the ditches and waves, which side of the road unwinds
into the bluing waters, the spined bone that springs
from the back of fish, the hands of fishmongers, the fine rope to walk on;
the correct way to approach a woman, to let her see desire
in your eyes, to hold her face in your hands, to unspool the net
into darker waters, to storm in silence, to finally let go.
Army SMART Book: On Being Lost
Step #1: Berate yourself for not taking a buddy to go pee.
Step #2: Don’t panic. You may choose to a) yell and wake up one of the other girls or b) stay quiet, embarrassed to speak. With option b, move deeper into the woods.
#3: It’s your first time away from home.
#4: When your toes hit the ocean, you'll know you're screwed.
#5: You’re in camouflage but want to be found.
Isn’t that funny? C’mon, it’s funny.
Step #6: Leaves at night feel like little hands.
#7: That’s a lot of little hands.
#8: The enclave of tents should be at irregular spacings through the trees. Don’t make it easy on the enemy.
#9: Or each other.
#10: Technically, you’re all still children, but soldiers.
#11: You can’t drink or stay out past 2300, but you can shoot people.
#12: Did your parents sign the standard in loco parentis form?
#13: Loco also means crazy.
#14: Thank you, Spanish class.
#15: Where it says “you can shoot people,” that means people of the Army’s choosing.
#16: With no visual cues, subjects will wander in circles as small as 20 meters.
#17: False dawn: caused by sunlight scattering off dust.
#18: How it will make your heart sing. It will feel like first love, imagining the night gone.
#19: Dust rearranged. Light shimmers off. It’s you and the dark again.
#20: You’re made to look like trees, to disappear.
We war-play, teenagers with little bodies
playing. Incongruous our rifles, half
as long as we are, dark and heavy
the rifles next to our bodies.
One soldier’s shelter half clips to another
and we pair off beneath rough canvas.
Bodies loose in Army-brown shirts,
such small girls, such little bodies.
One soldier the image reverse of another
in the gunmetal dark. Drill sergeants
patrol, reach into tents for loose rifles
and pull. Our bodies twisted over rifles,
cheeks stamped red with rifle scopes.
Camouflage the shadow in shadow.
The girl on sentry duty told to say
nothing, flashlight on red,
the night murmuring in the ear.
There was no way we could hold our rifles
tightly enough. What could we do?
Our bodies relaxed. We slept at last.
Movie Night, Public Affairs Barracks, Fort Benjamin Harrison
Movie night and what a surprise,
someone’s again rented Full Metal Jacket.
The connection: a military journalist,
pad of paper tucked into his helmet band,
but why must we preview our lives in combat,
trying to remember the story, where the trip wire
was hung or the placement of tank mines
or who died valiantly and who died with their backs
turned or the fullness of helicopter bellies, really,
what is my job here. By day we learn
to write press releases, features
for the base paper. We practice interviews,
not interrogation, the more useful military skill.
We roll film onto metal spools and dunk paper
into liquid bins of developer, fixer, the heady
smell of it, tangy, like citrus vinegar, no,
stronger than that, it carries the weight
of sulfur or gunpowder smells
without the associated bullets and flames.
None of us wear gloves, we are journalists,
people of words and photos, and when
someone’s hands go to her face
it’s to smell the fixer. The nickname
of my journalism teacher is Dr. Death.
If we’re ever in battle we will remember
him fondly, his rules of military photography:
Never take pictures of a soldier smoking.
Sends the wrong message. And we get it,
we really do.
for Ali & Jeannette
House bones. Plywood, windows, a roof,
the front door is foam, of all things, a play door,
a door for children. We imagine a kitchen,
sketch the stove on the subfloor, a counter,
a place where food will marinade and stew,
rise and expand, chopping block,
a sink for washing and for turning hands red,
for chapped hands, a counter for soaps and flour,
sugar and nutmeg, teapot, knives. Only one
of them cooks. Where carrots will go. Lentils
and quinoa. The savory and sweet.
Where tile will lie, then grime, then mop.
Children and dog. Then mop again. Where the
good china will one day fall, no one’s fault,
but tea-stained chips reappear for years.
Where a boy will learn to cook without help,
sandwiches sloppy with cheese. Where useful
gadgets. Where food. Where another child
might yet be born. The stairs up have
no railings yet, and our kids and theirs
climb without fear, arms wide over
unfinished space, wood raw and vulnerable,
a place where a bedroom will be.
There will be a day just for doors, another
for doorknobs. The children must peer out
each new window, as if January might have ended,
as if watching for changes to come.
The improbable tub. Someone will stand naked
before it, fill it with water and salts, step in,
emerge changed. Then it will be someone else’s turn,
someone else’s, dirt from the yard and the day,
dirt still in the making, plumbing at the magical cant
so that water rushes down, only down.
Uses: to enter the castles’ creak
and drawbridge, the forbidden throats
of elevators, lockboxes and their forgotten
contents, the unbroken shield of the sky.
A visit to my old apartment
now inhabited by traveling missionaries.
Perfect fit in the palm, the padlock,
it works on any heart, it’s a skeleton key,
it unlocks bones and ribcages, untucks tibia
from fibula, talus from tarcals, the bones
of the face, how many there are, how beautiful
they are on you. Even DNA may be unlocked
with secrets from birth and back,
32 teeth for meat and leaves, vestigial gills,
hair everywhere, the curious knuckling of brains
and finally there’s a key for it, a way inside
mitochondria, how useful to walk the street
and let free the paving stones, the zoo animals,
the way one person closes himself to another,
a ring that won’t come off, a maiden name,
the tight set of lips; unlock wings from birds,
hands from fearful wrists, one half of the leopard
from the other, the warship from its course,
the arrow from its uncertain bow. The criminal
from the crimes. The girl who loves the boy.
The skeleton key from its tarnish, the neck
from its necklace, the bullets from the anger,
the music from its erudition, the lover
from a hipbone, a child from the fall, the stream
from the bed, the power of it, the key in heft
and hand and though it’s terrible to say,
the you from me and then we remember
that although the key unlocks
it also binds two things together.
Even in sunlight the darkness mixed in –
to call it shadow or evening or night would be wrong –
the dark of pupils, the black vacuum of our mouths,
mouths open because we’ve forgotten to close them,
because it’s no longer important. Because we’re left
at the creek with our tongues circling a slip of water.
Because our bodies are dumb animals
that bleat like sheep, that die like sheep
with one thin, final scream that barely stirs the grass.
Because our bodies move on without us.
Listen. The ringing from the hills. A man stands
like a stone wall, crushes the red clover and brome
that bayonettes the air. The eight-inch cannons,
plugged shut, carry an old heat within. A plastic
lens cap is lost on the field, and in the foreground,
tourists blink in and out of the wall of fog.
For Sam Wood
A man inhabited by a rabbit thumps up the stairs.
Some days his feet are too big for the body, or the body
too small, he’s not sure, or his head on its swiveling stick,
or his hands that touch a woman with surprising grace:
deft, most would agree, hands of artistry and ferns.
Children would be nice, he thinks, in the future,
and the thought of those children is cottony and warm,
unformed as the half-seen subway face, the one
with the yellow scarf. When they were kids
he and his four siblings wore glasses, thick ones,
metal rimmed and shiny, brightly menacing,
each with their own illusions, the curvature of corneas
and chairs and spines, the lump of the horizon,
he didn’t yet know the word undulating but could feel it,
those five sets of eyes wide at the dinner table. A cut
of meat nestled in the center. Blinking and not blinking.
I.
I am foolishly sewing tonight,
foolish because I have never once
operated a sewing machine and here I sit,
owner’s manual in lap, the caretaker
of bobbins and needles, stitch patterns,
a wheel that moves the needle up and down,
a glass of wine I am afraid to touch
as I might then sew my thumb to my ass,
or sew my eyelids shut as I hear funeral directors
must do, or the ancient Egyptian embalmers.
And that’s enough to make the needle pause:
in death, the muscles constricting, the quiet will
of the eyes to see what has yet to be seen.
II.
There are hand stitches I learned as a child.
Running and fern stitches, whip,
the binding of cloth to cloth, backstitch,
I know my mother must have shown me
but at some point my sewing became secretive,
a thing to hide, I made my own toy people
and arranged them in families and towns,
created intricate rules, my stitches neater
and neater, tight to the felt, and when I think
of my childhood I sometimes think
of the weight of shears in my hand,
the snip and the needle to follow, and the lesson
that what had been done could be undone.
III.
Tapestries, Isabella Gardner Museum.
The faded reds and blues, the elusive green,
shutters at the window, low lights, we strain
to see the woven people kneeling and praying,
fighting and dying, one is weeping
tiny fabric tears that are also fading.
If we stand here, how long until the last
colors fade and one of us watching,
searching the patterns of the fabric,
bursts into pale tears?
The rain no longer falling. Our expectant faces.
Tired asters raise their seed-spent heads.
Hair stands on the arms, something glorious
is happening, someone flipped the switch,
the rainbow unmoored, the old leaves airborne,
clouds edge from their tracks, the nests sweetly aloft.
The hunched and humpbacked stand once more.
Daughter, not a drop remains in the pool,
the ice cubes drift from the tea, the apple
returns to its tree, your hair a sudden halo,
electric, winged. Oh the spring in your step.
Oh the little things that once could not fly.
And your own small body moving with a freedom
reserved for dreams. That little lift in my heart.
Karen Skolfield lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two kids and teaches travel writing and technical writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a contributing editor at the literary magazine Bateau and her poems have appeared in 2011 Best of the Net Anthology, Cave Wall, Memorious, RATTLE, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily, West Branch, and others. Her manuscript “Frost in the Low Areas” won the First Book Award for Poetry from Zone 3 Press and will be published fall 2013. Visit her online at http://www.karenskolfield.blogspot.com/
